Cheyenne (ABC 1955-1963, Clint Walker, Ty Hardin)

ABC Western saga Cheyenne, based on the 1947 movie starring Arthur Kennedy, saw the light of day in the fall of 1955, as part of Warner Brothers Presents, a three-series rotating program for the alphabet network.

As a weekly western, Cheyenne premiered September 25, 1956, with Clint Walker (real name: Norman Walker) as an 1860s frontier scout Cheyenne Bodie, a man of Indian descent who was schooled in both white and Cheyenne cultures.

Walker, whose size (6’5″, 235 pounds) prompted Cecil B. DeMille to hire him to play a pharoah’s bodyguard in The Ten Commandments, was the perfect choice for Cheyenne. “I think people like to see a big guy like me get beat up,” the star once said. In every episode, the huge cowboy actor was either horsewhipped, slugged, walloped, kicked, or mauled.” It was all in a day’s work . . . which lasted eight years and 107 episodes.

Off screen things were less smooth, Walker had numerous disagreements with the network over money, especially concerning his personal appearances. Things reached breaking point and Walker quit, not that it deterred the producers. They simply brought in Ty Hardin as new boy Bronco Lane. When Walker and the studio came to terms he returned to the series with Bronco spinning off into his own series.

Liberty Crossing (go90 2018, Ashley Argota, Adam Faison)

In espionage tinged sitcom Liberty Crossing, a somewhat hopeless young intelligence analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center must untangle a terror plot whilst finding his feet amongst the office’s petty backstabbing and bureaucracy – while also dealing with his interfering family.

Absentia (AXN 2017, Stana Katic, Patrick Heusinger)

Thriller series Absentia is about FBI agent Emily Byrne (Stana Katic) who, while hunting one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers, disappears without a trace and is declared dead. Six years later, she is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.

Arctic Air (CBC 2012, Adam Beach, Pascale Hutton)

Canadian TV show Arctic Air is a one-hour adventure series set in the booming Arctic, about a maverick airline and the unconventional family who runs it. On the ground, Bobby, the headstrong business partner, struggles to save the airline from crashing financially while Mel, the cantankerous co-owner, keeps his crew of pilots in the air. Caught in the crossfire is Mel’s hotshot pilot daughter Krista.

As the series progresses the character-based drama will deliver hard-hitting emotional stories – from the romantic entanglement of Bobby and Krista, to the conflicts that spark between Bobby and his competitors, his business partners and even his extended family. There’s a new gold rush heating up under the permafrost, and there are new fortunes of diamonds and oil to claim.